"Will you marry me?" asked J. Wallingford Speed.
"The idea!" Miss Blake gasped. "Will you?"
"Please don't speak that way. When a man cares for a woman, he doesn't deceive her—he tells her everything. You told me you were a great runner, and I believed you. I'll never believe you again. Of course, I shall behave to you in a perfectly friendly manner, but underneath the surface I shall be consumed with indignation." Miss Blake commenced to be consumed. "See! You don't acknowledge your perfidy even now."
"What's the use? If I said I couldn't run, and then beat the cook, you'd believe I deceived you again. And suppose that I can't beat him?"
"Then I shall know they have told me the truth."
"And if, on the other hand, I should win"—Miss Blake's eyes fell—"Helen, would you marry me?" Speed started toward her, but she had fled out into the twilight.
Dusk was settling over stretches of purple land, and already the room was peopled by shadows. Work was over; there were sounds of cheerful preparations for supper; from the house came faint chords of laughter; a Spanish song floated in, as Carara told his love to the tune of Mariedetta's guitar:
"'Adios! adios! adios! por siempre,
Adios! coqueta, mi amor;
Adios! adios! adios! por siempre,
Adios! coqueta, mi amor!'"
It was the hush that precedes the evening as it does the dawn; the hour of reverie, in which all music is sweet, and forgotten faces arise to haunt.
Speed stood where the girl had left him, miserable, hopeless, helpless; the words of the Spanish song seemed sung for a lost love of his. And certainly his love was lost. He had stayed on in the stubborn superstitious belief that something would surely happen to relieve him from his predicament—fortune had never failed him before—and instead, every day, every incident, had served to involve him deeper. Now she knew! It was her golden heart that had held her true thus far, but could any devotion survive the sight of humiliation such as he would suffer on the morrow? Already he heard the triumphant jeers of the Centipede henchmen, the angry clamor of the Flying Heart, the mocking laughter of his rival.